Chapter Eleven #2
the rock and the sway of the gale reaching inward to meet passion’s
rise. He pushed a hand under Merou’s belly and took hold of his
rigid shaft. Merou grated out his name, reached back and stroked
his thigh, the gesture at once tender and frantic. “Harder, please.
More.”
Priddy
would give him everything, as hard and as long as he liked. He
could: a new stamina had grown up inside him, a framework of
flexible steel. There were a million gateways to manhood, but this
one was Priddy’s, the uncertain lad with his doubts and his
premature ejaculation washed away in the tide. He cried out in
excitement as Merou began to grind against his hand, got a grip
with the other one on the frame of the bunk and laid into him fast
and deep. Muscles were standing across Merou’s shoulders, sweat
breaking out on him. “Priddy, make me come!”
“I will.” Like the storm, like waves and white horses exploding
to diamonds on the rocks. Priddy found a faster beat, a deeper
reach inside. Merou yelled and fought: jolted up suddenly onto his
hands and knees, and that was better still, the tight-clenched
back-to-belly bond where they would find each other, knock down all
the barricades. This was the place where loneliness would end.
Priddy leaned over him, kissing his neck. “Come with me now, lover!
Now!”
Hot liquid began to spill over his knuckles. Orgasm started
all over him—the tearing sweetness of buds ripping open in
springtime, in his hands and feet, under his stomach and his heart,
every muscle in his body ecstatically clenching to deliver him. He
tried to scramble down, not to let it be over so soon, this
blissful communion—and something seized him, the sensation a fish
must feel, being grabbed from a lake by an eagle, a wild upward
snatch. Merou was shaking beneath him, laughter edging his cries.
Up and back, and here came the climax-rush again, and he wasn’t
caught up in this wave: he was riding it, the surf of a lifetime,
the Cribbar surge that roiled in from the Atlantic on Fistral Beach
once a year, and all the wild-hearted, semi-suicidal boys and girls
lined up to greet it on their boards, crying out
shall us ride ’un or no... Back and up again, and this time Priddy couldn’t bear it, and
choked out a plea for release against Merou’s ear.
Whatever you’re doing, stop. Let us go. You’re
killing me.
Oh, my Priddy. You can bear so much more than you know. But
let’s take it—let’s ride the Cribbar—now, yes, now...
He came
with a force that swept blackout stars across his field of vision.
Merou jolted back to meet his thrusts, again and again, their
shouts flying outward to join with the voice of the wind. It took
Priddy all he had not to do as he’d feared, not to drop like a
stone on top of him when he was done. When the last shudder of
pleasure had racked its way through him, when he was spent, buried
balls-deep but lax and utterly done, he pulled out as gently as he
could, still extracting a rueful groan from Merou. Priddy folded
down beside him. He could hardly catch his breath. “I thought you
could only talk to me like that when we were
underwater.”
Merou
kissed his brow, then the outer corner of each eye where the tiger
stripes would come, an unsteady benediction. “It seems
not.”
“Why did it feel like that? What did you do?”
“Something I shouldn’t have. I’ve told you we can swim in time.
I found the sweet spot, the good place, the beginning of the wave.
And I rocked us back and forth over it a couple of
times.”
Priddy
swallowed. His voice was nothing but rasping cobwebs. “Wasn’t
that... swimming with an unqualified person?”
“Should have been. You’re not as unqualified as you were.”
Merou put an arm under Priddy’s head, rolled to lie protectively
over him, sweat and used condom and all. “You have to listen to me.
If I go away from you now—if you don’t think about me, and you grab
your topside life with both hands, and for preference don’t even go
swimming for a year or two, you’ll be all right. Nothing else will
change.”
Priddy
had only really heard the first part. He eased his hips luxuriantly
up into their shared, sticky heat. “Please don’t go
away.”
“Priddy. Give me your
hand.”
Priddy
would’ve given him a kidney. Obediently he let Merou take hold of
his fingers, guide them to the side of his neck. “That’s just where
you punctured me last night, to help me breathe or equalise or
whatever it was. You don’t have to worry—it’s healed, like you
said.”
“It hasn’t. It just doesn’t hurt.”
Priddy
felt around the edges of the wound for himself. It was longer than
he’d thought, and it wasn’t a hole anymore—a vertical slit, rather,
less horrifying than it should have been because a fold of smooth
skin seemed to be holding it shut. “Jesus. What the hell is
that?”
“I’d get you a mirror, but you’re less likely to pass out if
you just feel. Can you raise the flap?”
“The what? Of course not.” Shock rippled through him.
“The flap?”
“That’s where you’ll heal, if you take my advice and stay out
of the water. You’ll forget all about it in time. Meanwhile, since
you’re doing everything else so much faster than you should...”
Merou ran a fingertip under Priddy’s jaw. “Tense this tendon here,
as if you were going to tip your head back.”
Priddy
didn’t withdraw his fingers in time. Barely voluntarily he did as
Merou had told him. An indescribable something shifted in the
muscles of his throat. The fold of skin lifted away, and he was
touching fronds—warm tendrils, shifting like the tentacles of a
sea-anemone in the tide.
He
snatched his hand away. Jerked up into Merou’s arms, gasping.
“Shit!”
“It’s all right.” Merou rocked him: fiercely, tenderly,
brushing his mouth over the fold, which had snapped shut again with
elastic force. “It needn’t be real if you don’t want
it.”
“How can I know that? I don’t even know what it is!”
“It was only meant to stop your sinuses and inner ear from
blowing out when we dived. I’ve never known it become more than
that, not with any of my companions.”
“What’s it become on me?”
“You want the short answer? It’s a gill, Priddy.”
He
stopped himself from hyperventilating with an effort. God knew what
would happen if he did. “A gill.”
“You saw them on me when I changed. I didn’t mean to do it to
you, and I have no goddamn idea how this happened, unless you’re
half my kind already.”
“Half a mermaid?”
“A merman in your case—very much so—but yes.”
It would
explain a lot. Priddy had spent his whole life holding on to the
illusion that he belonged in the real world. His accident in the
nightclub had only helped sever the threads. “Tell me something.
The drugs I took—could they have opened me up to this?”
“I don’t know. I suppose so. You don’t question weirdness
because everything already seems weird to you, and you’re
hallucinating at the drop of a hat, so...”
Priddy
let go his death-grip around Merou’s neck. He sat up sharply,
almost spilling him from the bunk. “In that case, you really have
got to forgive Kit.”
“Why?”
“Because he made me more like you.”
“Think what you’re saying! I don’t know how much further the
changes will go, but you’ve seen what happens to me. And it’s a
one-way street—you might have times when you’re human again, but
they’ll be short, like mine are, tied to the moon and the tides and
goodness knows what else. You can’t ever go back.”
“Oh, Merou.” Priddy took Merou’s shoulder in one hand, laid the
other on the side of his face. “Why would I ever want to go
back?”
Merou
kissed him. For the first time, his mouth on Priddy’s felt
uncertain—almost afraid, as if out of the two of them Priddy might
be the one who knew what he was doing, who had a grip on the
topside and the Lyonesse worlds. When he eased back, Priddy kept
hold of him: gently trailed a finger along the top of one
cheekbone. “Will I get the weird eye thing, as well?”
“Oh.” Merou blinked hard, and the protective film flicked back.
“You little sod. That happens when I’m trying not to
cry.”
Priddy
was rolling back down with him into their musk-scented tangle of
sheets when the wind made the foghorn wail again. The note of it
was different this time. He laid a restraining hand on Merou’s
chest. “Did you hear that?”
“Mm-hm. Sounded like a boat.”
“Yeah, it did. Better let me go and have a look.”
“Don’t be daft. Anyone out in this weather deserves to drown.
We’re not Britain’s fourth emergency service, you know.”
Priddy gave a snort and dumped him down onto the mattress. He
hauled himself out of the bunk and went to look out of the
northerly window, the one that gave the best view of Hagerawl Bay
and Hell’s Teeth. He’d liked the sound of that we, as if he and Merou might one day
go diving together into the storm-racked Atlantic to save
shipwrecked mariners, breathe for them, wrap them in magical jelly
and bring them back to life. He didn’t believe Merou’s cynical
growl. Michael Henderson had probably deserved his fate, but he’d
been saved. “It’s part of my job here to keep a lookout for ships
in trouble. I’ve got to...” He leaned on the window ledge. “Oh,
Christ. It’s Geoff. He must’ve persuaded Bawden’s to deliver that
boat.”
Merou
pushed up onto one elbow, unsuccessfully hiding a yawn. “Did you
say Geoff?”
“Yes. The stupid bastard’s got her on the slipway. I’ll have to
get down there.”
“Hang on. You didn’t happen to catch his second name, did
you?”
“No, I... Wait. Something about knives, and it made me nervous,
like his smile... Blades, that’s it.”
“Professor Geoffrey Blades.”
Priddy
jumped hard. Merou was right by his shoulder. His lassitude was
gone, replaced by the intentness of a hunting cat. “Don’t tell me
you know him.”
“No-one better, twenty years ago. He wasn’t a bloody marine
biologist back then.” Merou pushed Priddy gently aside so he could
see. “Shit. That’s him. Priddy, stay away from him.”
“Why?”
“Because I’m asking you to. I’ve already lost enough to him,
and if he sees how you’ve changed... Stay up here until I get
back.”
“I can’t. I have to stop him putting out to sea.”
“He’s already casting off. Let the waves take him, or the
devil.”
“I can’t,” Priddy said grimly. Whatever Geoff was doing, he
hadn’t been likely to announce his departure with a blast on the
hired boat’s horn. That had been a cry for help, for intervention
of some kind. “He’s got Kit with him.”
“Just do as I damn well say!” He grabbed Priddy hard, for the
first time hurting him, shocking from him a short cry of pain. “You
don’t understand what’s going on here, and I haven’t got time to
explain. Promise me you’ll stay.”
“Merou, no. You know I can’t. What was Geoff Blades twenty years ago,
for God’s sake, to upset you this much now?”
“He was a genetic engineer,” Merou said hoarsely: raised one
hand, and knocked Priddy cold.